


The Loneliness of Safe Places

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Shelter [2]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Bed-Wetting, Food Issues, Gen, Implied/Reference Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nightmares, Recovery, Self-Harm, trauma responses in children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-27 06:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8391325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: Companion piece to "Shelter." Extended scenes showing Ava adjusting to living in the loft.





	1. How To Save A Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schuylergirls](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=schuylergirls).



> Filling a request for schuylergirls to show more depth with how the abuse shapes Ava's interactions with the world in the aftermath of being rescued from her abusive home. 
> 
> Trigger warning for showing trauma responses in children (food issues/binging, bedwetting, nightmares).

It’s easy to say you will do the right thing, but it’s much harder living it. 

\---

Movies always focus on the big dramatic rescue scene. They make it seem like that’s the most important part of it when that is just the beginning of the long and difficult journey to recovery. In some ways, the big dramatic rescue is easy. The lines to save someone in physical danger are always clear. The desire to stop death and physical pain is inherent in all living things so even when it’s hard or puts you in mortal danger, it’s still easy on some level to make that choice. 

What’s truly hard is to continue to make that choice after the adrenaline has faded, to continue to make that choice in all those days and months and years afterwards after the immediate physical danger has passed. It’s a sad reality of life that most people are only built to care about other people in the short term. No one wants to admit there is a limit to their compassion, but having to care about someone day after day is a relentless attack on the soul. The responsibility of holding another life in your hands takes everything you have. It’s not just saying _yes_ to that responsibility now, but _yes_ tomorrow and the next day and all the days after that. There is rarely an endpoint to it. Some people get better, a lot of them don’t. So the real question isn’t whether you are going to save someone’s life in the short term but whether you are still going to be there saving their life in the long term, whether you are going to still be there holding onto them and anchoring them to their life for all the days of their life for as long as they need you there. 

During the hard times, you have to remind yourself to make that deliberate choice, to choose to love someone who is broken, to seek to find the goodness in them when everyone else has given up, to not just throw someone away, a whole person away, because they bear all the scars of their history.

\---

Ava was hers. That much Jess knew was true. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t still hard. It was a constant struggle to fill all those roles in Ava’s life, of trying to be enough for a little girl that never had enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title references The Fray song, ["How To Save A Life"](https://youtu.be/cjVQ36NhbMk)


	2. Monsters in the Closet

Ava didn’t like the closet.

She liked most things about the new room she lived in. The sun would stream in through the window in the morning so it was always cozy and warm. It smelled like Miss Day, the comforting smell of vanilla and cinnamon. She had her own bed to sleep in with clean sheets and fluffy pillows. At night, she liked to roll herself up in the soft blankets like a burrito and imagine herself as a future butterfly waiting to emerge from a cocoon like Miss Day talked about in science. There were always art supplies which Miss Day would let her use to draw pictures sitting at the big desk in the corner, while Miss Day sat on her bed and knitted. Her favorite thing in the entire room though was Miss Day’s bookshelf. Miss Day had a bookshelf full of books. _Well-worn paperbacks with dog-eared pages, beautiful hardcovers with full-color illustrations, old classics with pages outlined in shiny gold leaf._ Every day when Ava came home from school, she would touch them reverently, running her hands along the spines. She used to dream about the books in Miss Day’s classroom when she went home at the end of the day. Whenever she was sad at home, it always gave her something to look forward to when she would get to go back to school again and read more of all those wonderful stories. But now when she came home from school, they were there waiting for her. They were what made her life with Miss Day real. They were symbols of a new life where Miss Day would always keep her safe.

But she still lived in fear of that closet.

\---

She didn’t like to go into the closet to get things. She was afraid it would swallow her up again. If she went in there, she knew the door would close and she wouldn’t be able to get back out. She would have to live in the dark again. She would get lost in the darkness and Miss Day wouldn't be able to rescue her this time.

She would hold Miss Day’s hand on the threshold of the open closet door as Miss Day ventured bravely inside it to retrieve their clothes. She had to make sure Miss Day wouldn’t get swallowed up too. 

\---

Even though she didn’t like to look into the yawning maw of the open closet, she didn’t like when the closet door was closed more. When it was closed, she imagined another little girl trapped behind it, unable to get out. 

Miss Day always left the closet door open after Ava told her about that.


	3. Hunger

The first month Ava lived with Jess, she watched Jess intently for what the ‘right’ thing to do was.

As far back as Ava could remember, she and her dad were always moving somewhere. They never stayed in one place for very long. Out of the blue, they would just pack up and leave the place they were living in. Frequently they would leave in the dead of night, leaving everything behind and just taking the clothes on their backs. She would wake up strapped into the passenger seat of some mystery car she had never been in before. She would look out at the familiar sight of the open road streaming past them through the window and she would feel a bit sad about leaving another home behind, but she knew better than to tell her dad about it. She would just close her eyes and go back to sleep. She would dream about what it might be like to stay somewhere instead of always be leaving. 

In the morning, they would be in a new place again, a place with different rules, where she would have to learn to blend in all over again. So she had a lot of practice learning how to act from observing the people around her.

\---

Food was always fraught with peril. She used to be hungry all the time, but she knew you couldn’t tell other people about those things because then they asked questions. Questions were bad. Questions would lead to people coming by the house where she lived with her dad, making her dad mad. 

She learned it was okay to accept food if other people offered it to you, but you could never take too much, even if you were still hungry. You had to eat it slowly and politely to make it seem like you ate that way all the time and it wasn’t the rare, special treat it was. That was how normal people ate food.

So when Jess would put the full plate down in front of her at mealtimes, she would watch to see how much Jess would eat. Then she would eat the same amount, maybe a little less so Miss Day wouldn’t think she was being greedy, eating all that good food that belonged to her. She would still be hungry sometimes but those were the rules by which Ava lived her life.

\---

When it was nighttime and everyone was asleep, Ava would sneak out of Jess’s room and into the kitchen. She would open up the fridge and all the cabinets to look at all the food inside. Food that was new and good, that didn't have green mold growing on it or bugs crawling through it, all the food that she used to dream about at night while her stomach rumbled in her little room. She would reach out to touch them, all the colorful fruits and vegetables, all the cardboard boxes and metal cans. Works of art created by nature and man. 

Even though she knew she shouldn’t, that she was being bad since this was Miss Day’s house and Miss Day’s things, she couldn’t help gorging herself on leftovers standing at the open fridge, trying to be quiet and furtive, but scarfing down as much food as she could eat until she felt sick. Full-sick still felt better than hungry-sick though. Of course there was food now, but it could just be gone tomorrow so she had to make sure she ate when she got the chance. 

\---

One night she accidentally knocked over the kitchen trash can in the dark as she was trying to sneak back to Jess's room, spilling its contents all over the floor. She tried cleaning it up the best she could so Miss Day wouldn’t find out and get angry. Ava already knew she shouldn’t be out here sneaking all this food so she didn’t want Miss Day to have to wake up to a mess to clean up in the morning. 

She noticed all that old food in the trash, food that was much better than the food she used to eat when she lived with her dad. _Kitchen scraps from fruits and vegetables, half-eaten sandwiches, containers of expired yogurt, the bottom scrapings of old casserole dishes._ It felt painful to just throw away such good food. She found a plastic bag under the kitchen sink and packed up all that precious food inside it. She snuck back to Jess’s room and hid it under her bed, just in case she needed it.

\---

Jess found the bag of old food under Ava’s bed a few days later. She put Tupperware containers of fruit and cookies and crackers under the bed for Ava instead. Ava would sleep with her hand resting on those Tupperware containers, making sure they were still there in the morning. 

\---

After a month, Ava stopped sneaking out to the kitchen in the middle of the night. Now, she had her own shelf with food that belonged to her in a safe place that she didn't have to leave in the middle of the night. She could ask for seconds if she was still hungry. There would always be more so she didn't have to make herself sick trying to fit all that food inside of her or burrow through the trash trying to save every last morsel of food like a squirrel searching for the last fall acorns to survive a long winter.

She knew Miss Day would take care of her. Miss Day would make sure she never went hungry again.


	4. Punishment

What Ava liked least about living with Jess was having to get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. 

The familiar fullness would stir her awake and she would lie there in her bed as long as she could stand it, trying to will herself to go back to sleep so she wouldn't have to make the journey down the long, dimly lit hallway. She would look over at the comforting shape of Jess sound asleep in the big bed and feel the heavy weight of guilt inside her chest about waking her up, taking her out of her pleasant slumber just because she was afraid to make the journey alone.

She tried to be brave for Miss Day. She would carefully crack the bedroom door open and peer outside to make sure the hulking masses of the men that lived in this apartment weren't lurking down the dark hallway. Then she would take a deep breath and run as fast as she could down the hallway to the bathroom. She would go as fast as she could and quickly wash her hands before running back to the safety of Jess's room. Ava knew it took 40 Mississippis to run from Jess's room to the bathroom and back again. As long as she never took any longer than that, she would be safe.

In the two weeks that Ava had been living with Jess that principle held true. She had avoided running into those terrifying male figures in the dark hallway late at night because she never took longer than 40 Mississippis going to the bathroom and back again. Ava imagined those Mississippis were a magic spell protecting her in the brief time that Miss Day was adrift in dreamland and could not.

\---

One night Ava gets up to go to the bathroom, but she pauses at the bedroom door. She could hear the noise of the TV on outside through the closed door. She pressed her ear to the door and she thought she heard a gravelly male voice talking to the TV, grumbling in frustration about bears from Chicago.

She grasped the doorknob in her tiny hand. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and tried to be brave for Miss Day. She turned the doorknob and cracked open the door a tiny bit to peer down the hallway into the living room. That guy Nick was sitting on the couch holding a bottle of beer, drinking like her dad used to. He turned his head towards her when he heard the creak of the door opening and their eyes met for a split second before Ava quickly pushed the door closed again, her heart racing. _He *looked* at her. He knew she was in here._ Ava could feel the squeeze of fear in her chest. Miss Day said he was nice, but it felt like he would do bad things to her like her dad used to. 

She hadn't met any of the men that lived here face-to-face yet but sometimes she caught glimpses of them when she and Miss Day were getting ready in the morning or when Miss Day held her hand and led her back to the safety of her room after school. Sometimes Ava could hear Nick swearing when he stubbed his toe on the hallway table late at night or when he was fixing things in the loft. Nick seemed angry a lot, grumpy. All his expressions were different categories of frowns, the most severe of which she heard Miss Day refer to as his 'turtleface.' Ava imagined a dark storm cloud following him around everywhere, threatening rain. She imagined him turning into a bear and chasing her down the hallway. She wasn't fast; she was slow, too slow to outrun Nick the Bear. He would catch her and lock her away in a tiny room like her dad used to. She couldn’t go out there, not even for a little bit, until she knew he was gone again.

So she waited at the closed bedroom door, wringing her hands and fidgeting with her legs tightly crossed as she tried to wait it out, silently pleading for Nick to go to his room, _go to sleep, go to sleep,_ so she could go to the bathroom. She waited at the door for half an hour but Nick was still out there. She slumped in defeat and went back to her bed to crawl under the covers. 

She lie awake in bed, unbearably, uncomfortably full. She thought about living in the closet and being hungry and how if she told herself not to be hungry, that she was full to bursting and couldn’t eat another bite, sometimes it worked and her stomach would stop rumbling and she would start to feel full. So she told herself she didn’t really need to go, that the feeling of fullness inside her didn’t really exist and was just her imagination, that her insides were entirely empty like the glass bottles Miss Day would put in the recycling. But it doesn’t work this time, even with her eyes squeezed tightly closed and her fingernails digging half-moons into her palms willing it to be true. She could feel the rivulets of moisture start to run down her legs all down her nice, new pajamas and all over the nice, clean sheets that Ms. Day bought for her and was ashamed.

She sobbed silently to herself with her face buried against the pillow so she wouldn’t wake up Miss Day. She forced herself to go sit down in the closet and closed the door to punish herself for the bad thing she did. Miss Day had been so nice to her letting her come live with her, but she had made a mess, probably the worst mess in the entire world destroying all those nice things Miss Day bought for her, and Miss Day was going to get mad and send her away again. It was all her fault. She was _stupid, stupid, stupid_ like her dad said she was. She hit herself in the temples and in the chest to make herself hurt so the bad, twisted feeling in her gut would go away.

She eventually cried herself out and fell asleep in the dark of the closet, sitting up with her head on her knees.

\---

In the morning, Jess woke up and was panicked to find Ava not in her bed. She rushed through the loft looking for her. Her roommates said they hadn’t seen her. Schmidt had already left for work but Winston said he would ask around in the building for her and Nick said he would drive around the block to see if anyone had seen her. Jess opened up the front door of the loft and peered outside. Maybe Ava got scared and ran away. It was a heavy door though; Jess didn’t think Ava could open it on her own. But she imagined Ava pushing her body against it with all her tiny might to run away from some imagined terror, taking the elevator downstairs by herself, and bolting into the night. Ava might be hurt somewhere, scared and alone with no one to comfort her, no one to rescue her. She imagined all the things in the world that could hurt a little girl, all the terrible things that Ava had already experienced in her short lifetime. Jess said she would protect her and she had failed. It was all her fault for not paying more attention. Ava must have tried to wake her up, tried to tell her a million different ways that she needed her and she hadn't been there.

Jess went back to her room for her phone. She had to call the authorities. Then she had to call the school to let them know she wouldn’t be coming in today. But when she went back to her room, she noticed the closet door was closed. She never left it closed anymore because Ava said it frightened her. Jess approached the door and pushed it open and there Ava was, fast asleep.

Jess knelt down next to her and shook Ava gently awake. Ava looked up at her with the most heartbreaking expression on her face. “What are you doing in here, sweetie? I was so worried about you when I couldn't find you.”

Ava pulled her into a hug, her arms going to wrap around her neck, sobbing into her. “I’m sorry, Miss Day. I made a mess. Please don’t send me away.”

“Oh, no, sweetie. I won't send you away. Tell me what happened.”

Ava got up to show Jess the soiled sheets on the bed. In a gentle tone, Jess said to Ava, “It’s okay, honey. It was only an accident. Don't be afraid to tell me when you have an accident, Ava. I promise I won't get mad.”

Jess got new sheets out from the dresser and made up the bed so it was nice and clean again. She changed Ava out of her wet, soiled pajamas and into dry clothes.

“I wanted to go to the bathroom, Miss Day. I waited so long, but _he_ was out there,” Ava whispered.

“Who?” Jess whispered back.

Ava pulled her face into a turtleface with her hands. The universal symbol for Nick.

Jess felt confused. Nick was an angry guy, but he didn't seem like the type of guy who would be mean to a little kid. He mainly seemed to avoid Ava. He made himself scarce during the day and came home late from work each night so he was rarely in the loft. But Ava wouldn’t lie to her; something must have happened. She felt a surge of anger go through her. When Nick got home she was going to give him a piece of her mind. She cupped Ava's face in her hands. “Honey…did something happen with Nick? Was he mean to you? You can tell me Ava; I’ll protect you.” 

Ava shook her head. “He’s just scary,” she whispered. “I tried to wait for him to go to bed but he stayed out there forever.”

Jess felt the anger drain out of her and she hugged Ava to her. “It’s okay, sweetie. Next time you need to go to the bathroom at night, just wake me up and we can go together. I promise I won’t be mad, even if I’m sleeping.”

"You never have to be afraid when I'm around, Ava," Jess said, hugging Ava fiercely to her. 

Ava's hands clutched at Jess's back, hugging her back just as fiercely. She wasn’t brave yet, but Ava imagined Jess's love flowing through her making her strong so that one day she could venture out into the world, unafraid.


	5. Waiting Out The Night

Jess thought she had made some real progress with Ava the first month they were together and things were looking up for the both of them. Ava was slowly coming out of her shell, becoming the healthy, happy little girl she was always meant to be. Jess was helping her build a new life so she could leave all those painful memories of her old life behind. Jess would make sure Ava lived in a world that was good and decent and kind. She would teach her that _home_ would always be a place where she was safe and loved, where she would always have enough food and a warm bed to sleep in at night, and there would never be any monsters lurking in dark corners. 

But some things can never really leave you. All the bad things that you live through get imprinted into the cells of you, into the very depths of your being. They sneak up on you when you least suspect them, blocking out all the goodness and light in the world so love can’t reach you. As much as you can love someone, there are dark times that a person must live through alone and all you can do then is _hope_ , hope that all that love you gave them is enough to endure all that darkness that lives within them until they can make it safely back to you again. 

===

In the second month that Ava lived with her, Jess was startled awake in the middle of the night by Ava screaming in her sleep. The most heartwrenching sobs in the entire world pouring out of Ava's tiny body and clawing at Jess's heart. She tried to comfort Ava but Ava was inconsolable, thrashing out at Jess still half-asleep, screaming about being trapped in small, enclosed spaces, struggling against all the monsters that were coming to drag her away into the dark.

 _In her dreams, she was always running. She played a never-ending game of hide-and-seek in a dark wood with twisted trees, the sound of heavy, ominous footsteps always just a few feet behind her. Her heart was jackrabbit fast in her chest, but her feet were clumsy and slow. Every time, she hoped maybe this was the time she would be fast enough to outrun the monsters, but it never was._ Ava kept calling out for Jess but she couldn't find her. They had just been holding hands a minute ago but her hand had slipped out of Jess's grasp. Ava knew the monsters had taken her. They had taken Miss Day and Ava would never see her again. Jess was _gone, gone, gone._ Ava had to keep running.

"I'm here, honey. I'm here," Jess whispered soothingly to her, holding Ava against her. But Ava couldn't hear her. She was trapped within herself, alone in a nightmare world where only pain and fear existed.

\---

The commotion wakes up everyone in the loft. Schmidt comes knocking loudly at her bedroom door.

“Jess! Jess, please! I have a presentation tomorrow morning. You’re going to wake up everyone in the whole damn building.”

“I’m sorry, Schmidt. I’m sorry. I’m trying.” Jess felt helpless. _She always knows what to do. Why doesn’t she know what to do?_

Winston was over near the couch trying to coax Furguson out from under it. Furguson had dive-bombed under the couch to escape from the noise. His tail was bottle-brush big, his ears flattened down on his head and his fur all puffed out, hissing at the noise. Furguson backed himself into the corner of the couch and crawled up into the weird hole in the back to hide inside it. He got himself stuck between the springs within the innards of the couch. He yowled loudly in protest, calling for Winston to come save him because the couch had betrayed him. Winston and Schmidt had to flip over the couch to get Furguson back out. Winston doesn't say anything to her but she can tell that Winston is pissed at her too. Winston is usually the calm, rational one. He rarely gets pissed, but one way to get on his bad side is to mess with Furguson. He always gets upset when Furguson is upset. Getting Furguson out of the couch makes Winston late for work so he is in a bad mood as he leaves the apartment. He decides to take Furguson to work with him in his cat kennel to escape the noise.

\---

After Winston leaves, Nick comes back home from working a double shift at the bar. He sees all the lights are on in the apartment even though it's the middle of the night. Schmidt and Jess are standing in the middle of the hallway arguing with each other. Schmidt has a disgruntled look on his face while Jess is holding Ava against her and she’s sobbing her heart out against Jess's shoulder. 

“What’s going on?” he asks them, rubbing his eyes sleepily. 

“Jess can’t make her kid stop crying." Schmidt turns back to Jess. "I knew this was going to happen! All kids are criers. Mark my words, this is just the beginning. This is going to become a nightly thing and I won't stand for it. You said you knew how to handle this, Jess!”

“I’m sorry, Schmidt. I’m sorry, okay? Ava is just having a bad night. She's just a little girl.” She knows all her roommates are pissed at her because she said Ava wouldn’t be a bother at all and she clearly was now. She can't send Ava back to foster care, but she knows Schmidt might be right. If this becomes a nightly occurrence, she doesn't know what she'll do.

She expects Nick to be angry with her too. But to her surprise, Nick doesn’t get mad. He has every right to be, especially having to deal with this after working a double shift, but he calms Schmidt down and tells him to go back to sleep. “I got this, Schmidt.”

“Come on, Jess. Let’s go for a drive,” Nick says to her. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but Nick seems to know what he’s doing. The fact that Ava is screaming doesn't seem to freak him out at all, even though Jess deals with kids all the time and this is even frazzling her nerves. He's calm and in control of the situation, so she grabs jackets for her and Ava and puts on her shoes to follow Nick out of the loft.

===

When they’re in Nick's car, she sits in the backseat with Ava cuddled up against her still crying into her shoulder. She thought Nick had some amazing bright idea, but he just ends up driving around their apartment building. She’s a bit let down that Nick didn’t have a real plan because he sure acted like he did, but after a while Ava stops crying and falls into a deep, peaceful slumber.

Nick looks in the rearview mirror at her and gives her a tight smile. She realizes this was the plan all along.

“How did you know this would work?” Jess whispers to him.

“My kid brother used to get nightmares a lot. This is what my Ma used to do,” he replies. Nick doesn’t say anything else after that. He gets a faraway look in his eye and turns his attention back to the road. Jess makes a mental note of that. Nick never talks about his family; she didn’t even know he had a brother. Nick surprises her a lot. He clams up whenever she tries to get him to open up about himself directly, doesn't like her pushing in, but sometimes he'll just offer up a hidden gem about himself when she least expects it, something secret and significant that reveals a little bit more about who he is. Jess can tell Nick is a good person, someone who is good and kind and decent, even if he doesn't think of himself that way yet. He pushes the world away to protect all the soft vulnerable parts of himself. He pretends to be someone else, someone who is angry and tough, someone who doesn't care about anything, but he can't help being what he is. Sometimes the mask will slip away and she can see who he truly is then. His eyes are soft and warm then and she will see the _want_ there, the desire to connect with someone else, to trust someone, before he catches himself and closes himself back up and it gets hidden away again.

\---

Nick drives around for a bit longer after Ava falls asleep, focusing on the soothing calmness of the road, caught in a memory. 

_He remembers driving around in the middle of a frigid Chicago night. His Ma is at the wheel. Elvis is on the radio singing about a Blue Christmas with the volume turned down low. He’s sitting in the backseat with his younger brother Jamie, both of them with their winter coats bundled on over their pajamas. Jamie has finally fallen asleep in the backseat after screaming himself hoarse at home, the warm weight of him passed out on Nick’s shoulder. It's just the three of them since his dad is gone again. It's been a long time since he has seen his dad; Nick thinks his dad is gone for good this time._

_His brother never got nightmares when Walt was around, but they would always start up after his dad would leave again and it was just his Ma and him and his brother living in that big house all alone. When his dad went AWOL again, Nick would lie awake at night and think about grown up things like the stack of overdue bills in the living room and putting food on the table, hoping his brother wouldn’t start screaming again. When that would inevitably happen, he would help his Ma get his little brother into the car and they would just drive through the neighborhood in the middle of the night until Jamie fell asleep._

_Even though Jamie’s nightmares were terrible, it was still kind of nice being in the car, just the three of them. It felt like they were still a real family then, instead of a fragmented, broken one with a dad that was never home, that had other better things to do than be there for his family. Nick would look out into the inky black night of the darkened city and tell himself, ‘We can make it. We can make it without him.’ He could feel the pulse of it in him like a prayer. As long as they always took care of each other this way, they could survive without him._

===

It became their unspoken ritual, something the three of them would share together. 

From then on whenever Ava would get nightmares, Jess would bundle them up to go driving with Nick. It would just be her and Ava and Nick driving in his car in the middle of an LA night, the gentle hum of the car engine and the open road before them, waiting for the dawn.


End file.
